Oh, here you go; you have Metro, but then you also have the "Classic" interface. Would this mean the Classic interface allows software to be installed without constraints (App Store, pseudo interface criteria, etc.)?

LOL yes. I think they want to mention the spec and whatever "industrial design" logic they have in mind. But it's clear to me this directive has never been written or reviewed by any developer. A spec gets written, or the developer writes it (the latter does not happen to often…) and then the software is developed based on this. Any "preparatory design" aside the spec falls short from the reality.

I'm curious: are you aware of any developer who got in trouble because of this directive?

My first opinion would be that this "preparatory design material" means something like specifications. Do I understand this as a notion that you must embed these specs to prove you're not infringing on someone else's patent portfolio? Maybe my mind is twisted on this… :-)

Well, MS has strong ties with Facebook, through its search engine mostly. But G+ increasingly appears to be more than a social network, and rather different from Fecebook. And in any case, it's still Google taking customers and products away from MS.

Hey, how about investing in the draft of a book on manipulations tips used by malicious lobbyists and distribute it to policy makers ? Well, this won't help with the ones that are financially corrupted but could be useful for the others.

I love to see my enemies using Manipulation Rule # 1, ie. taking the other party's arguments and simply reverse them. This always sounds like a confession. For ex here : MS saying that "the definition of open standards adopted in the government ICT strategy would hamper innovation and restrict 'freedom of choice for citizens'." This is just so BiG.

The use of the terms "commercial software" instead of "proprietary software" is deliberate. It is hard to believe that an Open Source expert can ignore that "open source" does not mean "gratis". As for the paragraph regarding a model with a "core of commercial software with layers of openness around it".. Wtf ??! If this is not meant to get the readers and users confused please tell me what it is !